The Promise of Liquid Biopsy for Individualizing Cancer Care

Date: Thursday, September 30, 2021

Time: 11:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Duration: 1 hour

This webinar will provide an overview of how liquid biopsies — the molecular analysis of circulating cell-free tumor DNA (ctDNA) released into the blood — can provide new insights into tumor biology and help personalize patient care.

Klaus Pantel, Chairman of the Institute of Tumor Biology at University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, will discuss how liquid biopsy analyses can provide information for the early detection of cancer and identify cancer patients at risk of relapse. The approach may also serve to monitor tumor evolution, therapeutic targets, or mechanisms of resistance on metastatic cells.

Liquid biopsies show particular promise for metastatic cancers. Repeated needle biopsies of metastatic lesions are invasive and some locations are difficult to access. In contrast, monitoring of blood samples is only minimally invasive and can identify tumor evolution and tumor subtype switches, which may then lead to the selection of appropriate therapies based on the molecular composition of recurrent metastases.

Prof. Pantel will also discuss the importance of technical standardization and clinical validation of liquid biopsy assays.

Dr. Alexander Sartori from Agena Bioscience will follow with an overview of Agena’s MassArray System and available variant panels for circulating cell-free DNA in various cancers.

Registration